The U.S. is once again fighting an unnecessary, abundantly preventable war to the detriment of our country and the planet. It is my contention we are also, once again, avoiding, as a body politic, confronting the degree to which the “enemy” that Iran is labeled as, results from our own failures. These failures go back to 1953. I will introduce other failures that we blame on our victims, much like abusers learn to do while avoiding accountability.
It was the CIA’s complicity with the UK’s counterpart, MI6, following Winston Churchill’s efforts to control Iranian oil. It led to the overthrow of the democratically elected government of the prime minister of Iran, Mohammad Mosaddegh. We installed Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the shah (king) of Iran in his place. The shah proved to be a cruel, merciless dictator whose secret police destroyed all opposition — except the clerics. It took until 2013 for the U.S. to acknowledge its central role in the destruction of Mosaddegh’s government. Rarely is this taught in our schools — at our peril.
Fast forward from 1953 to 1979 when the Shah was overthrown, our embassy was captured and hostages were taken. It was the price to be exacted for the meddling our government had engaged in 26 years earlier and for which the Iranians had been paying a price ever since under regimes of Islamic fundamentalists.
Fast forward to 2026 and see the results of more of our government’s actions. Add the final ingredient that has made the current war inevitable — Benjamin Netanyahu. Donald Trump refused to see the merit in maintaining the nuclear deal Barak Obama had brokered. Instead, he and Netanyahu have joined forces putting forth the dual deception that Iran is a threat to our national security and Israel’s existence. Thus, the attack with no plan and no exit strategy. There must be an ever-evolving narrative to put the blame for what has resulted on the Iranian leadership. The current prime minister survived an attack that killed his father, the previous Ayatollah, his wife and his son. What did Trump and Netanyahu think was going to happen? What role do the arms suppliers and the oil magnates play in such a war? Now with fundamentalists on all sides — Islamic, Jewish and American — the new Crusades threaten to engulf the region.
That’s case study #1 of how so many of our leaders learn nothing from catastrophic mistakes. Our government helped to overthrow a democratically elected government in Guatemala to protect United Fruit’s interests in 1954. To maintain control of Chile’s mining industry and uproot the democratically elected communist leadership in 1973 (fearing another Cuba) in the person of Salvador Allende, a coup was staged — with our complicity. There are too many others to elaborate so here’s a very partial list of countries where we interfered: Nicaragua, Guatemala, Chile, Brazil, and El Salvador. In all there are at least 20 such interventions to overthrow or heavily alter governments since the early 20th century.
How does this connect to the war in Iran? Throughout the past 125 years we transformed the doctrine of Manifest Destiny (resulting in the genocide of a horrifying number of Native Americans) into American exceptionalism. This expansion internationally enabled our leaders to delude themselves and their voters into thinking it was our right and responsibility as the exceptional purveyors of democracy we portrayed ourselves to be, to determine who should rule elsewhere. This enables our government to best protect the economic interests of the super-rich regardless of the toll it takes on the citizenry of these countries and our own.
Fast forward this time to January 2025 and the start of the regime of Trump 2.0. Actually, his policies towards immigrants were revealed on that fateful escalator ride in 2015 when he announced his candidacy and referred to Mexican immigrants as drug dealers and rapists. As president once again he is blatantly and disrespectfully blaspheming world leaders with the wrecking ball that is his presence. The victims of all the coups, the boycotts and the sanctions are those seeking asylum, a safe haven and economic opportunity their own countries, thanks to our endless interventionism cannot provide. Instead of offering the sanctuary and the promises on the Statue of Liberty we are using ICE to terrorize, to profile and to use gestapo tactics to humiliate, frighten and even murder the innocent people fleeing the awful conditions we helped create in their homelands. Blaming the victim once again…
Will we ever learn the lessons our history reveals?
Tom Weiner lives in Northampton.